"In a very interesting interview from October, Google's VP Marissa Mayer confessed that having access to large amounts of data is in many instances more important than creating great algorithms."
Hmmm, I think there may be more to this.
Searching the entire Internet used to be a challenge. Some might say that Google was the first to do a really good job of it. But now, Microsoft and Yahoo, and others are being competitive (not VERY competitive, but they are at least playing in the same league).
As more companies create vast self-healing server farms the number of companies in that club might grow. I think the enormous power of these vast armies of server are Google's strength. What would be called in other industries, a "barrier to entry".
The more stuff there is to search now, the bigger that barrier will get. Books, photos, blogs, documents, maps and so on. Google is basically saying "we can handle all of this stuff and more, and do it so cheaply that we pay for it with advertising (and make a profit to boot)".
Suppose that other big companies like Microsoft and Yahoo not only fail to catch Google in search or advertising, but also fail to make their ever growing server farms run at any sort of profit margin at all.
Who is left holding all the marbles?
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